Ghosts / Unfinished Games snippets and outtakes
by Reive
Summary: Pieces of writing that have not yet or may not be integrated into the Ghosts/UG narrative. May contain spoilers, rough drafts and other oddities.
1. another letter from Severus (no spoilers...

Disclaimer:

It's JKR's world, I just play in it.

Another letter from Severus. Not sure if it will make the story or where in the timeline it falls. No spoilers.

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Dearest Allosia —

There are times, dearest, when I have to engage in the smallest most methodical actions available to me merely to calm my nerves and rage, which, I suspect, will always be far too self-directed. It is perhaps one of the facts of myself that drew me into this life. In many ways my gods are limited to simple, graceful and repeated motion; I negate myself in quiet creation and it shames me as a man who was once a child that dreamed far too often of being any sort of star at all.

That after all these years I still cannot bring myself to choose a mortal life is more than absurd, it is cruel and it is humiliating. More importantly it is unfair to anyone who has ever attempted to love me, namely your stubborn and delightfully unwise self.

I beg that you do not take offense that you have opened me to possibility and reminded me of hunger.

In contemplation of my jealousy and covetousness,

Your Severus.


	2. Severus' letter to Gabriel (MAJOR SPOILE...

Disclaimer:

It's JKR's world, I just play in it.

THIS IS A MAJOR SPOILER BOTH FOR THE CONCLUSION OF GHOSTS AND FOR GABRIEL'S SORTING. TURN BACK NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW.

REALLY.

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My Gabriel --

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I do not know where to begin, but perhaps with you I have never known where to begin. I did not expect to have a child.

I am so sorry -- sorry that I will not be there for the life spread out before you and sorry for my many failings, both as a man, and as a father. It is with fear, awe and reverance I have loved you and if this ever seemed not to be the case, I assure you, the fault was not your own.

Your Sorting was one of the proudest moments of my life and the tentative smile you gave as you took your place in Gryffindor broke my heart, although the reason for this is other than you have been led to expect. Sometimes the Hat chooses your place, not based on what you have, but what you will need. That night foretold, to both your mother and my self, the fate I go momentarily and too soon to meet.

I have done many terrible things in my life, Gabriel, and only some, a very few, were out of necessity. I have both seen and been the worst of men and the life of a spy is neither glamorous nor wholesome. In the days to come this will no doubt be made far too clear, far too publicly. Trust that your mother and the Headmaster can no longer be shocked by who I have been and that they can perhaps help you make some sense of this life that has so confounded me.

Please take care of your mother, please help her, I do not even know what to ask of you. She is so very strong, and sorely deserves the opportunity not to be. I hope you two will have the sense to give each other the room you need to grieve.

This pendant is, as you well know, the token of our wedding pledge. I promised your mother, my wife, that I would never return it to her and so I pass this memory of who I was and who we were, to you.

You may spend much of your life trying to out run fate, most of us do. Now that it finally comes for me, I will tell you it is a warm fear. I am so glad to have had you in my life; you give me cause to regret leaving it.

While redemption may indeed be possible for us all, please honor me by never having need of it.

Your Father,

Severus Snape.


	3. another letter from Severus (MAJOR SPOIL...

Disclaimer:

It's JKR's world, I just play in it.

THIS CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS TO THE CONCLUSION OF UG. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. IF YOU DON"T WANT TO KNOW PREMATURELY, DON"T READ THIS.

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Allosia —

Thank you, for our life together all these years. It makes going harder, but peace seem more plausible. How we are supposed to do without each other, I do not know, although I trust in time you will again find companionship and something resembling ease. I hate to think of it, but do not mistake such a sentiment for jealousy. Rather, it is envy, there is so much more of you I had hoped to celebrate, but know that I shall always be with you as ever I can.

Because I promised you on our wedding day that I would never return to you the token of our pledge, I have included it in my letter to Gabriel. I hope you understand my desire that he has this memory, not just of who I was, but of who we were.

Many terrible things will no doubt come out about me in the next days. I doubt very much that any of it could shock you at this point, and while I cannot help but be glad Gabriel will finally have the truth about his father, it will not be easy for either of you. I am sorry I cannot do more to mitigate that particular series of cruel inevitabilities.

I do not know if this letter will find you, and if it does, why, but let me assure you its messenger, should he reach you, should he have been truthful with me, deserves nothing but your thanks, as odd as that may prove to be. He offered me this opportunity at grave personal risk.

There are questions you no doubt want answers to, that, in truth, I cannot fathom how to address in moments as desperate as these. I am more afraid than I would have thought and find that for the first time in decades I am not so ready for my fate. I am not, at this moment, in much pain. I have been given the sense that I am too dangerous to risk torturing, although I find I must refrain from becoming hopeful.

I love you and wish there was a greater eloquence for it. You have seen a million sights of me no one else ever has, and now, no one else ever will. You will always have the whole of my gratitude for the gift of you, of our son and in so many ways, of me. 

I am yours ever and even after.

Your husband,

Severus Snape.


	4. Severus musing (no spoilers)

It's JKR's world, I just play on it.  
  
No spoilers here. Just Severus musing on the human condition, and his mom. Probably won't find it's way into UG proper.  
  
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Contrary to the popular notion, we are not all dying from the moment of our births, but forgetting. The amount of knowledge we have lost by five is appalling and worse still, by fifteen seems inconsequential. Do you ever bother to think this is the last arithmantic equation I will ever perform or notice when a word has slipped from your vocabulary, often permanently, to some land of mental rubble?  
  
Memory has such grim power over us, and when flashes of some past intrude, we mistake them for having import, versus being a mere and temporary petulance of the brain, much as how in a moment of seizure a myopic's vision may suddenly and briefly be rendered perfect. That we ascribe our imperfections, emotions and crude impulses to slavery to magic is galling. That we pretend to be rigorous with a world we do not include ourselves in, laughable. The slightest science, as most of us perform it, is merely one more act of useless convenience.  
  
My contempt, such that it is perceived, is merely for this constant obfuscating our species, such that it is, engages in. I am exhausted by melodramatics chosen over rigor, regrettably, my own included.  
  
It occurs that my own intellectual certainty and acuity comes from my mother, that she must have known from early on about this mortal sin and necessity of forgetfulness, that perhaps her keen, relentless and even inspiring disinterest in me came from one simple and obvious source. I was her son, and yet did not know better than to forget the womb. Original sin has not to do with knowledge, but the loss of it. 


End file.
